#i just like ending all my analyses w QED

[comradekatara]

I saw someone once talk about misogyny in atla and how the fire nation seems to be the least misogynistic (except kyoshi island); female soldiers while the water tribe wouldn't allow katara to learn offensive styles and toph was barely allowed to exist autonomously. Also, Zuko's daughter being heir. But I feel like that has more to do with the fire nation being "you there!! Destroy some other nations with us now" and wanting lots of warriors rather than being forward thinking

hmmmmmm...... people will often cite female guards as an example of why the fire nation isn’t misogynistic. women can work in maximum security prisons and abuse human rights too yaasss queen!!!!!!!! 

and i agree (obviously) that the water tribe, as a whole, holds some pretty fuckin sexist beliefs. katara isn’t allowed to be a warrior, yue is married off as a teenager to a man she doesn’t even like as a person, and of course sokka is fed a bunch of bullshit that he espouses until he arrives on kyoshi. (which is episode four by the way. like, yes, sokka was sexist, but he also started chugging that respect women juice the second his beliefs were proven wrong! sokka is open-minded as fuck. but that’s for another time.)  

kyoshi island is interesting. it’s basically this paradise for gender. when kyoshi broke off from the earth kingdom (inadvertently defeating chin the conqueror in the process), it was evident that she wanted there to be a place that was safe from dangerous convention–– where she and her comrades could be themselves. i find it hard to believe that under at least 95% of the kyoshi warriors throughout history have been lesbians or bi women. 

the rest of the earth kingdom is a lot more...conservative. ba sing se is shown to have beauty standards that intersect with class. gaoling also shows this through the beifong family as a whole. if you’re rich in the earth kingdom and you’re a woman, your job is to sit there and look pretty. working class earth kingdom women have more autonomy in a sense, but obviously if they’re living in poverty (which many if not most are due to the conditions of war) then you’re stripped of autonomy anyway. 

i can’t say much about the air nomads, as they do not exist in this world. they do appear to be gender-segregated, though. 

as for the fire nation, i think the fact that female firelords can exist, (not proven through izumi, who lives in the future and therefore it can be assumed the world has progressed, but) proven through azula, doesn’t actually say as much as we think it does. plenty of deeply sexist societies have been ruled by women. look at ancient egypt. look at britain. female monarchs and female prison guards do not indicate that a society isn’t sexist, simply because the water tribe is more sexist. that’s absurd! 

let 👏🏼the 👏🏼fire 👏🏼nation 👏🏼have 👏🏼female 👏🏼war 👏🏼criminals 👏🏼

in our world, it is evident that patriarchy, capitalism, imperialism & colonialism are intrinsically linked. of course, avatar does not take place in our world, but it does draw heavily from it. the fire nation parallels a history of japanese imperialism, and that cannot be ignored. 

iroh, good, kindly iroh, who helps zuko so much, is a misogynist. he can critically reexamine the cost of war, but perhaps judith butler is a bit too far. he gives zuko a knife and azula a doll, the irony there being that it should have been the other way around. 

and i think above all, it is the fire nation siblings that exemplify the sexism endemic to the fire nation. perhaps, on a surface level, women have more rights than they do elsewhere in the world, but through their society’s treatment of both zuko and azula, we see that gender matters. sokka comes from a place that insists he be a man (swift as a coursing river). well, zuko also comes from a place wherein he is expected to be a man (with all the strength of a great typhoon). zuko is not an inherent violent person (obviously). he adopts behaviors of toxic masculinity because it is the only way he sees himself regaining his honor, being worthy in his father’s eyes. 

azula’s arc can definitely be analyzed through the lens of how misogyny shapes her life, because it does, even just in ursa and iroh’s subtle treatment of her, or her need to perform perfection and total competence at all times. but, besides toph, who has a parallel arc (but she deals with it a lot more efficiently lol), zuko’s is very much about Gender. what it means to be a man (as mysterious as the dark side of the moon). (okay thats the last one i promise.) 

in the legend of korra comics turf wars, kya informs us that even kyoshi could not make progress in regards to homophobia in the earth kingdom (hence her isolationist approach. she was just like okay fuck this). apparently, air nomads were all about free love, which... idk about but whatever. and the water tribe as of lok times likes to “keep matters private,” but they “won’t disown you for coming out.” and according to these comics, “for most of its history, the fire nation was tolerant, but then fire lord sozin took power. he decreed that same sex relationships were criminal.” i think this is kind of flippant, just “bad guy do bad thing,” but i also think there’s truth in it. there’s no doubt in my mind that the fire nation is the most actively homophobic of all four nations. 

just look at the episode “the beach,” which showcases not only how these kids (azula specifically) have been warped by this mentality that they exist as weapons of mass destruction before they are teenagers, but also how they feel forced to perform heterosexuality. azula attempts to get a boyfriend because she is jealous of ty lee, who is getting a lot of attention from the teenage boys around them, and even though she enjoys the shallow validation, the second they ask her out she panics and runs away. meanwhile, mai is as sullen as ever, which later in that episode we learn is a response to her mother’s insistence that she be Proper and Behave (again, class intersecting with misogyny!). and zuko is at his absolute worst this episode. like book 1 zuko has nothing on beach zuko, who sucks so hard i want to punch him in the face. especially when surrounded by other guys his age, he feels this pressure to perform masculinity, which he always takes to mean Be As Angry As Possible. the beach is about how they are lying to others, and to themselves. azula says she doesn’t have sob stories like all of them. mai says so as well. when azula asks zuko whom he’s angry at (and it does seem like she’s genuinely trying to help him here) and she says “dad?” he gasps and immediately says “no!” (but he’s getting there.) in a society with gender equality, do you really think they’d all be behaving the way they do? i mean, zuko’s entire arc is gay as fuck!!!! and azula’s also pretty clearly a big ol dyke, even if that’s less relevant to her journey. 

basically, i think saying the fire nation isn’t sexist is a pretty surface level interpretation of a society wherein homophobia is deeply entrenched due to its imperialist values. there will always be sexism, misogyny & homophobia under patriarchal, industrialist, imperialist power structures. 

QED